Milan Chatterjee has opted to leave UCLA are becoming embattled by a boycott Israel campaign.
Milan Chatterjee has opted to leave UCLA are becoming embattled by a boycott Israel campaign.
LOS ANGELES (Diya TV) — Milan Chatterjee, former president of UCLA’s Graduate Student Association, has decided to move on from college politics, and the university, after becoming embattled in the controversial “boycott Israel” movement at the school. He will instead transfer to New York University for his final year of law school.
An Indian American from Colorado, Chatterjee told UCLA Chancellor Gene Block that he was being harassed and discriminated against by anti-Israel students for simply attempting to be neutral. Explaining his reasons for leaving the school, Chatterjee said the campus climate was “hostile and unsafe.”
“Since November 2015, I have been relentlessly attacked, bullied and harassed by (boycott, divestment and sanctions) BDS-affiliated organizations and students,” he wrote to Block, according to the Daily Bruin.
Chatterjee said the hostility toward him began after the false accusation that he, an Indian American Hindu, was not “viewpoint neutral” when allocating funds in his capacity as Graduate Student Body president to a diversity event.
His real problems began last year when Chatterjee threatened to rescind funding from a Diversity Caucus event if the caucus took a position on BDS. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.
“What really occurred is that my administration and I abstained from supporting either a pro- or anti-BDS agenda. This condition was explicitly approved by a UCLA administrator. The event took place on November 5, 2015 and a variety of campus viewpoints were actively represented, including both sides of the issues raised by the BDS movement. Dean Erwin Chemerinsky — one of America’s leading constitutional law scholars — and four legal organizations concluded that my administration and I acted in a viewpoint neutral manner,” he explained to Block.
“It is very scary how BDS activists will go to any measure to destroy people’s reputations and careers,” said in an interview. “UCLA should be ashamed of themselves for refusing to take action, and rather joining in the harassment I endured by BDS groups. I am not the first student nor will I be the last.”
UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez said the university stands by the Discrimination Prevention Office’s three-month investigation of Chatterjee, which found he had not been neutral in handling the issue.
UCLA does not support divestment from Israel, it recognizes the right of students to hold such opinions, Vazquez added.
“(UCLA) remains proud of its numerous academic and cultural relationships with Israeli institutions. Supporters and opponents of divestment remain free to advocate for their position as long as their conduct does not violate university policies,” Vazquez said.
